Continuity Family Business Consulting
Marital Mediation May Just Save the Marriage━and the Family Enterprise
A guide to what marital mediation is, isn’t, and how it can be effectiveOne of the biggest threats to a family enterprise, especially in its first and second generations, is divorce. With the value of a business concentrated among a few stakeholders, the liquidity demanded in a separation of marital assets can cripple a company and compromise succession. With so much at stake for a family enterprise, unhappily married couples must explore all options to improve their marriage before deciding to divorce.Marital mediation is broadly defined as negotiating ways to sustain a marriage. Many couples have expressed that if they [...]
How to Engage a Family Business Consultant
Five essential tips to setup your consultative relationship for success At Continuity, we understand the paradox that families face when considering the prospect of hiring a family business consultant. Often, the very reasons why a family might benefit from such a consultant ─ lack of goal alignment among stakeholders, conflict, communication issues, or just being stuck ─ are the same reasons that prevent them from coming together in agreement to seek outside help. Drawing from my own experience when I was on the client-side of this work, I recognize the importance of addressing these concerns head-on. With this in [...]
Considering a role in your family business? An MBA may be helpful.
Discover the transformative influence an MBA can have on your future, regardless of whether or not your path leads to your family business. So your family owns a good-sized company and you’re thinking that maybe that’s where your future lies. You started out in the warehouse shuffling boxes back and forth during high school, maybe had a stint in manufacturing or marketing, and you have grown up knowing the company and its industry well. Now, a college grad, you need to consider your future, and make important decisions that will impact not only your career, but your family AND [...]
Deconstructing Conflict: A Personal Approach to Family Business Consulting
A Family Firm Institute interview with 2023 Interdisciplinary Award Winner Doug Baumoel, who transformed personal pain into a unique consulting methodology Continuity Family Business Consulting Founder Doug Baumoel isn't your typical family business consultant. Born into a family business that his father started in the basement of his home when he was 6 years old, he was initiated early into the world of family business dynamics. “We had a lot of conflict … we sought help from folks like family business consultants and other related professionals to help manage what was going wrong in [...]
Overcoming Family Business Conflict and Achieving Succession Success
How one family resolved their differences and empowered a new CEO The Challenge Stakeholders in a family-owned construction business were in conflict over management succession, which created crippling conflict between family members. The founder, owner, and president of this company, Peter, wanted his daughter, Christine, to eventually succeed him as CEO. Peter’s brother, Jack, who was second-in-command at the company, rejected the plan to prepare his niece to become CEO and walked off the job, feeling angry and unappreciated for the value he had brought to the business. While Jack didn’t envision himself taking over for his brother, the [...]
The Progenitor’s Dilemma: Avoiding Entitlement When Transferring Wealth
A practical framework that empowers heirs while minimizing negative consequences Wealth can, at times, feel more like a curse than a blessing. Wealth magnifies the impact of bad choices and presents dilemmas to those progenitors who must determine how to distribute their assets over their lifetimes and beyond. Perhaps the biggest fear among benefactors is transferring wealth in a way that engenders entitlement. Progenitors do not want affluence to crush the next-generation’s initiative, sense of purpose or self-esteem. They also want to ensure that those receiving some of their wealth do not confuse self-worth with net-worth. This can be [...]
Venting With Purpose: How To Complain About Your Family
Tips for complaining about family members and how best to respond In any family business, complaining about fellow family members is bound to happen. Our natural tendency as human beings is to focus on negative events. This negative bias leads us to complain—a lot. Ten good things may have happened at the office that day, but the one bad thing will get most of our attention. So, we will come home to complain about that one thing (and the one person responsible) with our spouse, or we will text our sympathetic siblings and cousins about it. But complaining in a [...]
Beyond The Box Thinking for Family Business Compensation
When it comes to compensating family employees, a common best practice is to pay family members a salary that’s in line with what non-family members would earn for the same job, adjusted for size and location of the company. A compensation consultant will often suggest such a pay range and, while many family members may receive the higher end of that range, some will actually receive the lower end in an effort to guard against the appearance of nepotism. While a ‘best practice’ such as this can work for many families, we believe this is a simplistic approach that [...]
Airing Grievances: 10 Tips for Better Communication with Family Members
The purpose of effective communication is to transmit information from one person or group to another and to convey a specific message that elicits a desired reaction or result. Communications among family members have an additional purpose: To deepen our understanding of each other, find accommodation for differences that remain, build resiliency and bring family closer together. Family relationships are uniquely permanent, so communication must serve not only the content of the communication but the relationship itself. Problems arise, however, when we’re not clear in our communication, when emotions get the better of us, or when we misjudge the [...]
A Succession Planning Guide for Family-Owned Businesses
Transitioning a company to the next generation of leaders is a complex process that can easily falter if there’s not a strong succession plan in place. When we talk about succession, we’re focused on BOTH management and ownership; these two are tightly intertwined and must be considered together. If either management or ownership succession fails, uncertainty and misplaced expectation can have major repercussions that can lead families into conflict. Additionally, encouraging family members to join the business as an employee without considering ownership succession will likely raise false expectations of ownership, issues of fairness, and give mixed messages to [...]
